Bend or break: CIOs must become more flexible

With 91 per cent of businesses leaders saying security concerns are hindering new technology adoption , it’s interesting to note Gartner’s recent call for increased flexibility and adaptability among CIOs struggling to cope with the consumerisation of IT in the workplace.

As CIOs face mass mobility and a proliferation of employee-owned devices in the workplace, Gartner analysts are saying that, rather than stick your head in the sand and hope the challenges go away, it’s time for companies to accept reality and adapt their security policies to deal with it. Gartner vice president Nick Jones has said that CIOs need to ‘explore new ways to provide, fund and manage mobile devices to allow employees more choice and support BYO (‘bring your own’) programmes.’

Faced with the inevitable, Gartner envisages four possible management styles emerging among CIOs attempting to deal with consumerisation: Control-oriented, choice-oriented, innovation-oriented and hand-off. Of these, the ‘innovation oriented’ approach resonates the most with me: According to Gartner, organisations taking this approach empower users to exercise more control over their devices and applications, using strong policy orientation to ensure responsible behaviour. Business doesn’t wash its hands of responsibility for critical issues; it does, however, foster a usage philosophy under which policy dictates technology, not the other way around.

Education and communication play key roles in achieving this mentality. Rather than operating at a remove from the rest of the business, CIOs should engage with and work with staff, proactively educating them about the risks associated with device proliferation – and facilitating the behaviour changes needed to make things work securely. Blocking won’t make the challenges go away, but will ensure you never really find solutions that work for your business.

Policy, not policing will allow those 91 per cent of business leaders to truly innovate and evolve in step with emerging technologies and services.

Nick Peart